ex-President Trump

Chez, are you creaming your pants that after all these years of brown-nosing Sklansky, he has finally deigned to acknowledge your existence?

The details of what it would take to be a professional juror could be a variety of things as long as they included knowledge of the two fallacies Aristotle wrote about and the psychological ability to examine oneself and recognize situations where you may be biased.

I want to make sure that we aren't saying that because its chance it's not predictable.

Getting outside my wheelhouse.

It's not all a coinflip. A person who robs 10 banks is much more likely to be convicted of bank robbery than a person who robs zero. But some are falsely convicted and some criminals get away with it.

The book I was thinking of mostly is Noise by Daniel Kahneman and friends. They talk about this stuff in many areas. But there is a lot on the law.

They lean David's way, trying to reduce noise with objective criteria for decisions. But I think they would be skeptical that pro jurors would be a big improvement.

That expression was correct when lots of people took thinking seriously and when there weren't thousands of people who make their living by fooling and manipulating those who don't. But not so much now.

Deep down you all know I am right. You just don't want to admit it to some friends and family members.

Pro jurors would get burnt out just like judges do

The ancient greeks who came up with so much of this stuff knew all about rhetoric as well. It isn't new.

Pointless words indeed.

Well here are a few counter examples.

The GP is heavily opposed to the drug war. Elites are overwhelmingly in favor of it.

GP favor cheap, effective HC. Elites favor expensive, ineffective.

GP flatten or reduce military spending and war. Elites: more spending, create wars to justify the spending.

GP new parents should be with children. Elites: It's more important that they keep going to work.

GP worried about natural environment. Elites, much less worried.

Maybe there is a way to get better elites? That seems to work occasionally like Singapore, but didn't go well in most authoritarian countries.

To partially change the subject I have a question for the lawyers out there:

I believe that most Defendents can ask for a decision from the judge alone with no jury involved. Meanwhile if there was a jury, the judge will often not allow a certain piece of evidence to be admitted because he doesn't think it should be considered or because it will have to big an impact on them. But since the judge knows this evidence, is he supposed to "unhear" it and pretend he didn't know it? Or is he, unlike the jury, supposed to consider it (although presumably giving it less weight than he thought the jury would)?

I can save you some trouble: if they said they weren't going to vote for Trump, they are lying. Asking them again may or may not result in them lying again, but it usually does with Trumpers.

btw we already have professional jurors. they are called bench trials.

An educated guess would be that the appellate court upheld a denial of a pretrial motion to dismiss, where the standard would require the court to view the evidence most favorably to the non-moving party.

Not willing to research it further though because the argument offer my Luciom is ridiculous.

we expect judges to understand that they shouldn't consider it in their decision making. if your question is: is it possible to ever really do that with human nature and decision making, then i dont have a real answer for you. probably not. i would argue that its MORE possible for a judge to do it than for a jury to do it when something gets said and then objected to/stricken.

in my limited experience the reason you would want a bench trial is if you think the law is clear and on your side and you think that the jury would confuse it.

when i was a prosecutor i always wanted a bench trial for something like a violation of a protective order. very clear strict liability offense, you showed up at the address your banned from? guilty!. but you can muddy the waters a bunch in a jury trial by getting in something like the victim invited the defendant over.

i once lost a misdemeanor trial that had a confession because the jury didnt give a **** about it. probably rightfully so

Arguing that Biden failing to enforce the border laws (to the extent you believe is mandated in the legislation) is a violation of Americans' constitutional rights by way of any effect on apportionment is absurd. So no, I don't agree.

Its funny how both liberals and magas like to criticize "elites".

in any case if the people you are talking about disagree with a concept that is clearly correct (as you imply above), then they are not elite. And they are certainly not the ones the ones I would pick to be professional jurors.

No i am saying the above exclusively because of what courts determined likely happened wrt 1st amendment violation.

I can see how a judge would be expected to ignore illegally obtained evidence. But what if he disallowed evidence because it would "inflame the jury". Why couldn't he consider it but give it less weight than he thought the jury would?

Except the laws are not the same. The law under which Bragg prosecuted Trump with was unique to NY.

I think bench trials should be way more common and I am on record in this thread claiming it should be the norm with exceptionally notorious defendants

I know it would come as a shock to you but many countries especially those which have civilizations far older than the american ones, don't have juries

In most countries judges are civil service employees that can't be fired unless they do something monstrous. They have no political check when hired either. They are selected by present judges which oversee the exam to become a judge with quotas decided by parliament

Juries can work really well when it's actual peers (same income/education as the defendant) for down to earth crimes (stuff normal people can easily understand is illegal).

For exotic indictments (think "he rigged the RNG of a poker room to gain an advantage, or "he falsified documents to commit a crime.but you can decide which crime even if we are not trying the defendant for that crime nor we have to prove it) for people who are exceptionally famous juries are a bad joke

Wtf? Imagine there is something that materially benefits the top 5% of household while it damages everyone else.

What do you mean with a concept being "correct"? Elites can correctly assess something benefits them even if it's a met negative for society and pursue it rationally.

They would be elite in doing that

i've never dealt with anything like that on a bench trial.

like if you were charged with felon in possession of a firearm you would be able to stipulate to the fact that you are a felon, and then the prosecution couldn't bring up the specifics of your previous conviction of threatening a little old lady with a machete or killing a puppy with a stick. the judge would exclude the specifics because it was more prejudicial than probative since the defendant already stipulated that they were a felon.

again i would assume/hope the judge would be able to put that aside in their decision making, but who knows if that's even possible with humans.

rule 403 is

"unfair prejudice" is listed by itself and not in relation to the jury like "misleading the jury" is, so i would assume it works the same way on both jury and nonjury trials.